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March 29, 2008

A Short, But Tall, Porch

In the first baseball game played at the Los Angeles Coliseum since 1961, the Red Sox and Dodgers will meet on a field with the left field line only 201 feet away (shades of Ned Williamson at Chicago's Lakefront Park). Yook:

Two hundred feet to left? That's awesome.

Imagine if they brought the Wall one-third closer to the plate at Fenway. There will be a 60-foot-high (or 62) mesh fence on top of the left field wall. The wall in right field is 440 feet away.

Jason Varitek thought the last time he had played on a field with a 200-foot fence was the Little League World Series when he was 12. Kevin Cash -- who will start tonight with Tim Wakefield pitching -- is not expecting a 61-48 score.

Think about the Coke bottles [above the 37-foot Green Monster]. They're not 30 feet above The Wall and not many hit there. I think there will be a lot of "oohs" and "ahs" but I don't think it's going to play that much of a role in terms of home runs. But if it plays off the net and ricochets all the way back to me at the plate, I might think differently.

How many high flies to left will fall on the other side of the fence? Will the outfielders play over towards right field and let the third baseman and shortstop play caroms off the left field mesh? Will balls carom? How tight is the mesh?

A crowd of 93,103 watched a 1959 exhibiton between the Yankees-Dodgers. A crowd of 115,000 is expected tonight for the 10 PM game. Terry Francona hoped to rest his starters, but "out of respect to 115,000 people, we're going to play them a little bit".

(The game is on both NESN and MLB.TV, so we might have a game thread.)

I really wanna know that, though, it seems quite important. Are balls gonna be slingshotting all over the place, or just lazily sliding down the mesh, landing on the top of the wall and plopping down on the track?

Did you see where Edes on XB last night had the wrong pitcher in the game? These "real" writers will get the hang of blogging someday....

There might not be any dongs, but I gotta figure people would just tattoo that "fence" for never-ending innings. So I guess pitchers will be staying "middle-out" on righties. ANd sock is right, the defenses could have three guys between right and center field. All this makes me think normal-scoring game, but maybe just a little higher.

NESN already showing shots of the stadium. Looks like a huge party out there.

The camera is so far over (to the left or "Yankee Stadium '83" side), it's at such an angle that the ball coming out of Wake's hand appears to go up and to the right above his hand before going back down and to the let. Thanks to Ish for drawing my attention to this. I don't know if it's because of the angle, the speed, or the knuckler, but it's probably all three. And a Dodger did move to third on a ball that got by the catcher before.

Jacoby bloop over short, one hop off the wall. And then he steals his second base of the game--except the ump calls him out. Eh, I guess it was very close. Maybe a tie. Of course, we have no angle on this.

This is awesome. Don and Rem admitting they can't see any ball in the air and have no idea what side of the field it's going to or how far it's travelling. I really can't believe they couldn't position the center field camera in the normal spot, or even on the other side of the pitcher (as it is), but still at the same angle. Instead, it's so far over that literally on every pitch with a man on base, you can't see the plate/batter because the ump is in that spot.

I know it's just an exhibition game. But it's an embarrassment when you can't see the plate on 80 percent of pitches. Couldn't they have made sure the camera wasn't exactly in that spot? Or at least told the ump to avoid positioning himself in that one spot just this once? Is this on the Dodgers' network, too? Did their camera get the "good" spot?

I remember reading about Timlin's injury. And it just seems like if a game was on I should have seen it. But I believe you, if you've got a memory of it. I guess Don and I are wrong. But hey, he was THERE.